CIA Iran Coup

by Editor
July 20, 2017 at 7:32 am

http://www.smartertimes.com/1550/cia-iran-coup

A New York Times editorial headlined "Avoiding War With Iran" includes this passage:

Most Americans are aware of Iran's crimes against this country, including the 52 Americans taken hostage in 1979; the 241 Marines killed in the 1983 bombing of their barracks in Lebanon; and the 1996 bombing of the Air Force quarters in Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps less known are events that still anger Iranians — like the 1953 coup aided by the C.I.A. that ousted Iran's democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, and America's intelligence support for Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

It's as if the editorial writers are totally unaware of the Weekly Standard article "The Myths of 1953," by a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ray Takeyh, reporting on newly declassified documents indicating that, as he puts it:

In August 1953, the Iranians reclaimed their nation and ousted a premier who had generated too many crises that he could not resolve. The institution of the monarchy was still held in esteem by a large swath of the public. And the shah commanded the support of all the relevant classes, such as the military and the clergy. Mossadeq's unpopularity and penchant toward arbitrary rule had left him isolated and vulnerable to a popular revolt. America might have been involved in the first coup attempt that failed, but it was largely a bystander in the more consequential second one.

That article was picked up by Mosaic, but apparently the Times editorial writers don't read that publication, either.

Takeyh predicted in his Weekly Standard piece: "It is unlikely that the professoriate and the American left will abandon their myths about 1953. They are too invested in their narrative and too obsessed with defending the Islamic Republic to defer to history's judgment." It looks like he sure got that part of it right, at least so far as the New York Times is concerned.